The Arab Spring

Getting increasing paranoid that things are going too well. Keep waiting for the shoe to drop in either Algeria or Sudan. Am I alone in that?

No.

I'm also fearing belly-up. :/

Nope, especially in the case of Algeria. That place is a tinder box, almost no one thought that a transition would be smooth.

Add me to the list. Sudan in particular has been in slow disintegration for a while, I'm worried about what happens if, say, the Darfur region becomes not the only area in conflict.

Algeria seems to be in the better place right now, but that could easily change if the regime refuses to listen to the protests and tries to consolidate power ahead of the election.

Sudan looks especially risky because the protesters seem to be trying to avoid a repeat of Egypt, which the military will likely resist.

My mom says that someone posted on a WhatsApp group she's in, possibly quoting someone else, about how the arrest of Al-Bashir is all a sham to fool the protesters, and that he's actually in a safe location orchestrating the regime's actions through intermediaries.

Does that sound plausible? I found it somewhat far-fetched; after what happened in Egypt, I've started to realize that most of the military regimes of the Arab world are not really autocratic (example: Gaddafi), but rather oligarchic, with the military high command being the oligarchs in question. That's why you see people considering the idea of Bouteflika being (quietly) ousted by the rest of the military leadership credible, for example.

Edited by MarqFJA on Apr 18th 2019 at 5:20:21 PM

It’s possible but it requires the generals to put their own lives at risk to protect Bashir, which seems rather unlikely.

In Venezuela for example, a big part of Maduro keeping power despite his lower and lower approval ratings among the Venezuelan people is the fact that the military leadership is siding with them.

They do that for a number of reasons:

1) Lingering loyalty to Chavismo

2) Money

3) Opportunities to make more money

4) Avoiding reprisal for what they did to get that money

It's not quite the same as the military regimes in the Arab world, but still.

Edited by M84 on Apr 19th 2019 at 1:27:51 AM

It's probably why the protests are still going on in Sudan and Algeria, precisely because of those fears.

Looks like Sudan has its match.

It looks like the military is demanding that the protesters take down their roadblocks, and the protesters seem likely to refuse.

https://citeam.org/russias-syria-trophy-exhibition-mistakes-and-manipulation/?lang=en

Latest OSINT from Syria. Apparently, there's an attempt to use propaganda on some of the ISIL vehicles captured by Russians/Syrian forces.

Didn`t find a better fitting thread. Saudi Arabia executed tons of people, among them one student that should have gone to Michigan https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2019/04/23/saudi-arabia-beheadings-executions-mujtaba-al-sweikat/3555724002/

Also, I've heard that Trump veto'd a Cognress descision to stop supporting the Saudis in Yemen. Why doesn't that surprise me?

Edited by Forenperser on Apr 26th 2019 at 2:56:18 PM

Ugh, I only learned of this from today's sermon at the mosque. I was like "WTF is this imam talking about???" in my head because there was so little context. This is so shameful... and terrifying.

x 5: Just remove the first point and you get the motivation for much the Arab world's military regimes, particularly the Egyptian one.

Edited by MarqFJA on Apr 26th 2019 at 6:29:27 PM

Isn't it kinda dangerous for you to be posting here online?

It seems the Algerian security services have arrested Said Bouteflika (younger brother to the former president) and several other Bouteflika family allies.

The Army Chief is still around however.

You're not the first to say something like that, and to be honest, if the secret police were actually as you imagine them to be, I would've been arrested ages ago. It seems that so long as you don't actually incite other citizens or throw mud on the public image of the country, you can complain in the company of foreigners all you want. And that's assuming that they even watch this place.

There was an attack on protesters yesterday, the first since the ouster of Omar al-Bashir. The military council is denying all involvement, placing blame on a rogue militia, but the protesters are now incensed...

I don't know if this is prophetic for Trump.

But a rocket was used to target the Green Zone in downtown Baghdad.

Wait is Trump in Baghdad?

No.

But that came after the State Department issued a notice for non-essential personnel to leave the embassy there.

It seems the negotiations between the protesters and the military in Sudan has just about run out of time. The military has moved in and is breaking up the sit in in front of the military headquarters by force.

More than 30 dead as Sudan's military rulers break up sit-in.

BBC is reporting it is the deadliest day in the protests thus far. The Sudanese Professionals Association, which was spearheading the protest, have called for absolute disobedience to the Transitional Military Council.

The TMC itself seems to have a factional conflict going on between the reformists and the hardlinders, with the latter currently being blamed for the massacre.

Mohammad Morsi, the deposed Muslim Brotherhood affiliated president of Egypt that had been elected after the Arab Spring and then overthrown by the military a couple of years later, has died while standing trial, according to Egyptian State media. Of a heart attack it seems.

The man's fate was sealed long ago, so as suspicious as it looks, I don't think it was a murder, though who knows these days....

The first thought that came to me was that poor treatment led to health issues that killed him now.